


the sanctity of fajitas

by kishere



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M, they can't cook
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:47:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22192027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kishere/pseuds/kishere
Summary: prompt: dan and phil cook something without the recipe, because phil is confident they know how to cook it from memory
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 26





	the sanctity of fajitas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kamunamis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamunamis/gifts).



> so this is for mikey because he won a game we were playing (he guessed things that make me feral).
> 
> thank you to [itsmyusualphannie (itsmyusualday)](https://itsmyusualphannie.tumblr.com) for beta readin this. tara is a blessing and i would die for her.

Dan couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten. He knows it was sometime this morning before he had arrived at Phil’s flat, but in the haze of YouTube videos and tumblr browsing, he’s sure they didn’t eat lunch. This wouldn’t be a problem if he hadn’t half-heartedly watched a cooking video about fajitas. Sure, he had been eating more vegan/vegetarian slanted in the past few months of his life (when able to with his uni’s shit meal plan), but there was something enticing about the idea of fajitas, a craving he didn’t know he had. 

“Philllllll,” Dan whined from the couch, hoping to get the attention of his boyfriend from the other room where he was filming.

“Yeah,” Phil called back.

“What do you want to do for dinner?” Dan asked, figuring he could give Phil the illusion of choice. 

“I dunno,” Phil answered, sounding closer. Dan tilted his head to the side and saw Phil standing in the doorway of the lounge. He looked particularly cuddleable in his grey tee-shirt and pyjama pants. Phil was just doing a weekly update vlog, nothing intense that required above-the-waist action.

“So, I was thinking fajitas,” Dan continued on, his one-track mind kicking into motion. He watched Phil shrug and figured that was as good of an agreement as he was going to get. Dan got up from the couch and trekked into the kitchen. He opened the freezer and froze as a thought occurred to him. 

“We don’t have any of the premade mix,” Dan said, digging through the freezer, hoping maybe there was a pack hidden at the bottom that had survived the Great Fridge Clean Out of 2011. 

(It was Phil’s first year living alone and Dan had volunteered himself to help clean when he heard Kath was coming to visit. It had been disgusting since Phil had grown complacent with the amount of leftovers and opened bags of frozen chicken nuggets that had freezer burn in the fridge.)

“Well, we could make some from scratch; I think we have tofu even,” Phil said, who had walked into the kitchen and opened up the door next to Dan to peak in the fridge. They had combined forces and had ordered in food not that long ago so it was full of food that was healthy and they had every intention of cooking with, deciding to start their 2011 goal of being more healthy.

“Do we know how to do that?” Dan questioned. He knew people could make food from scratch but Phil and him were pretty dependent on premade meals with detailed instructions. Well, except Phil knew how to make eggs but that was the extent of their culinary knowledge outside of using a recipe book. It was a shame they had made it this far in life without being gourmet chefs but it was fine.

“I think we’ll figure it out,” Phil said, sounding even more confident in his conviction as he pulled bell peppers out of the fridge. “Try new things, Dan.”

Dan battled with himself for a minute before giving a sigh as he finally shut the freezer door and went for their cutting board. He felt in his soul they should look up a recipe (they had a cookbook and he was sure the internet would say something) but Phil looked so excited, he didn’t have the heart to rain on his parade. The worst thing that could happen is they might burn down the apartment complex but Dan was feeling confident (Phil’s moods were contagious sometimes) it wouldn’t reach those levels.

Dan grabbed a knife (he could not begin to say what size, but it was big and looked like it would cut well) and stared at the onions. He was trying to imagine the size of the sliced onions in the pre-made fajita mix. Dan shrugged when he couldn’t remember and cut the onion in half before remembering he was supposed to take off the skin. He peeled off the skin (and an actual layer of the onion, snorting as he remembered Shrek) and continued chopping the onion. He only got this job because Phil cried when he cut onions, but they weren’t turning out pretty. They were a little thick as best but Dan figured they would shrink while they cooked. Onions were the ones they shrank while cooking right?

Dan looked over at Phil and saw him painstakingly measuring out some of the few spices they (well, really Phil, as this was his flat and all Dan did was come over and use his washer and give blowjobs) had into a bowl.

Fuck yeah, they were crushing this. 

Dan went on to cut the bell peppers until he heard a plop in Phil’s direction. He turned and watched as the man he loved let the soy sauce bottle drip soy sauce into the spice mixture.

“What are you doing?” Dan asked, thoroughly confused. They were making fajitas, right? Why would Phil need soy sauce?

“Making a marinade,” Phil explained, “they do it on all the cooking shows for the meat.”

Had they been making the El Paso meat wrong? They didn’t have a marinade in the packet.

“Are we supposed to?”

“I think so. How else do you flavour meat?”

“With spices?”

“Well there are spices in this. Then we let it sit for a while and then cook it.”

“Okay,” Dan eventually agreed because hey, it seemed logically sound. He had seen people do a marinade, today even, he just didn’t remember them using soy sauce. “Do we need to cut the meat?”

“Would you?” Phil asked as he added some red powder to the mixture. 

“Yeah babe,” Dan said and he walked around to Phil’s right side and grabbed the meat package from off the counter. Dan carefully opened it with the knife and tried not to gag at the blood soaked into the bottom of the styrofoam tray. 

“I’m sorry,” Phil apologized when he noticed what Dan was gagging at. “Do you want me to cut it instead? It’ll be a minute but I can do it.”

“Please,” Dan said as he stepped away from the meat. He wasn’t always squeamish about meat, but there was something about the blood that made him feel guilty and sick to his stomach today. 

“Here, dump half of this into another bowl and we’ll also make tofu,” Phil soothed with a squeeze to Dan’ shoulder as he switched places with Dan. 

Dan immediately turned to wash his hands in the sink before grabbing a smaller bowl to dump in some of the marinade. It smelled pretty good, Dan thought as he dumped roughly half into the bowl. He crept around Phil in the tiny kitchen and grabbed one of the tofu packages from out of the fridge. He grabbed another knife and cut the tofu inside the plastic container before dropping the pieces into the marinade. 

“Do we just leave it unwrapped?” Dan asked Phil.

“I think so, but we put it in the fridge,” Phil replied, carefully cutting up the meat on the chopping board. The knife Phil was using was having difficulties cutting through the meat evenly but Phil was forcing it through. Dan turned away, still feeling a little squeamish. 

“And then we just let it sit?” Dan asked, leaning against the counter.

“Yep,” Phil chirped. 

“For how long?”

“I dunno, like thirty minutes?”

“Enough time for a round of Mario Kart?”

“Oh, it’s on, Dan,” Phil said as he used his hands to lift the meat into the marinade bowl. It took him three trips with how small Phil had chopped the meat. Dan managed not to laugh at how focused Phil looked as he carried the meat the short distance from the cutting board to the other bowl of marinade, impressed that Phil only managed to drop two pieces on the floor. 

Dan grabbed the bowls as Phil washed his hands and managed to cram them into the fridge after moving a few things around and some precarious balancing. As soon as Dan shut the door to the fridge, Dan caught Phil’s eye and started running to the living room so he didn’t have to have the Player 2 controller. It’s not that it was better, Dan just felt a connection with it. So did Phil, who claimed it played better than the Player 2 controller. 

“It’s not fair,” Phil whined as he appeared in the lounge. “You were Player 1 last time.”

“But I got it first Phil,” Dan whined. “I ran for thiiiiiis.”

Phil grumbled but ultimately conceded because Dan did “do an exercise for this.” The two ended up playing for an hour until Dan’s stomach let out a loud grumble that even made Phil pause. The two finished the round and made their way back to the kitchen where Dan pulled out the two marinating proteins. 

Dan didn’t see much of a difference in the meat except it looked darker. The tofu was a mildly brown colour too, so Dan took it as a sign that the marinade worked. 

Phil was at the hob, turning it on high. He turned it on and put a pan on it, waiting for it to heat up because “Dan, when you get them in restaurants, the pan are steaming hot.” Which Dan couldn’t argue with him, so he and Phil spent time flicking water into the pan to see when it was ready for them to put the proteins into it. They decided to put the meat in first since Phil won Rock, Paper, Scissors. They dumped it in along with half of the veggies and Phil yelped and some of the sauce started to pop loudly.

“Spatula, spatula,” Dan shouted as he took a few steps back from the concoction in the pan. Phil grabbed a spatula out of the drawer next to the hob and started to stir it. It was steaming so fast, so much faster than the El Paso mix they used. But it seemed that Phil had it under control so Dan pulled out his phone and scrolled through Twitter, occasionally showing Phil funny gifs that popped up when he wasn’t stirring the meat around. 

About twenty minutes later Phil took a piece of meat out and pronounced it as done. It was brown all over and a little damp looking but Dan was cooking something else anyway. Dan waited until Phil was done with the pan and rinsed it out, not wanting the meat juice to contaminate anything he was cooking. The steam nearly blinded him from where water made contact with the pan and Phil most definitely laughed at him.

“You know how if I open up the dishwasher right when it’s done and it fogs up my glasses?” Phil asked. ”That’s what it’s like.”

“That’s what it’s like,” Dan mocked back as he put the pan back on the still-lit hob. They waited again and Dan cheered when it sizzled on his droplet of water. He dumped his tofu in like Phil had dumped his meat, giving it a stir when it started to pop. He continuously stirred it and started to panic when about five minutes in, his tofu started falling apart. It was looking close to scrambled eggs. Which fine, he’d have tofu tacos that were flavoured like fajitas; it would be close enough to satisfy his craving he figured. Phil took out another pan and started heating up tortillas, hissing whenever he grabbed it off the pan since Dan was using the one spatula they owned. Dan took Phil’s wrist when he was done and pressed a kiss to his light pink fingers which led to a bit of regular kissing until Dan heard the tofu sizzle too loudly. 

Dan waited for about twenty minutes, the tofu lightly browned and completely mush by this point, before he declared it done. He spooned it on to a plate and grabbed a few tortillas from the plate Phil had placed them on. He paused to dig out a jar of salsa from the fridge, leftover from a few weeks ago but still safe, and poured some on one of the tortillas straight from the jar. 

Dan was so excited. This was the hard work and home-cooked meal he and Phil would try every year at the beginning of the year and Dan was convinced it would set the tone for their fitness journey this year. Dan used a fork to spoon some of his mush on to the tortilla along with some of the peppers and bit into it standing in the kitchen.

Salt.

It was so salty Dan thought he was drinking seawater. How was it so salty? Phil was watching though so Dan swallowed it and grinned. 

“It tastes good,” he croaked, watching as Phil took a bite of his own fajita. His face screwed up and Dan wanted to laugh but Phil had been so proud of his marinade. How had it turned out so bad? They had made fajitas from the El Paso packages plenty of times and they had never turned out this bad.

"Dan, I think we fucked up," Phil said, stating the obvious, staring down at his food forlornly. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Dan said, reaching out and squeezing Phil's shoulder. "I mean. I didn't stop you. I knew we should have used Delia Smith's recipe book."

"Delia Smith wouldn't have had a fajita recipe," Phil said, looking down at his plate of uneaten food. He sighed and looked at Dan. "Want me to make some eggs?"

Dan thought about it for a moment and nodded. "Here, I'll help you clean up."

It felt so wasteful to Dan to throw away the food they had just made but Dan and Phil both agreed that they wouldn't have eaten any of the leftovers due to its "unique culinary flavour". But Dan had been raised middle-class so he promised to make a donation the next time some Ad-Sense money came through to them. Dan helped Phil clean out the pans and they agreed they could make scrambled eggs and dump them in the already-made tortillas to make breakfast tacos.

Dan hopped up on to the one space of the counter that wasn't taken up by an appliance and watched as Phil made eggs for both of them.

"You know," Dan said, about a half-hour later, so thankful that Phil knew how to make the best eggs really. He had poured some of the salsa on the taco and it actually tasted pretty okay, lightyears ahead of their ruined tofu and beef fajitas. 

("It's the cream," he remembered Phil saying time and time again but it wasn't until now that Dan really believed him when he was starving. Phil's eggs reminded him of the times he had gone up to Rawtenstall when they were first starting to get to know each other. God, how could one get nostalgic about eggs?)

"What?" Phil asked after he swallowed his bite of food.

"There isn't anyone else I would want to destroy the sanctity of fajitas with," Dan declared, looking at Phil, who burst out laughing. Watching Phil’s face light up made the past two hours of work being destroyed worth it.

"I love you too, you ass," Phil chuckled as he ate another bite of the egg tacos.


End file.
